This issue marks the 7th anniversary of the Barcelona based independent arts/culture magazine Y SIN EMBARGO and it is the last issue of their 4 seasonal publications cycle.

“Seven years of a periodical and independent publication is perhaps both necessary and a long enough time to verify or put into practice a set of ideas, wishes and adventures. YSE closes a cycle, but doesn’t close (neither literally nor metaforically).

New situations, new circumstances and, most of all, new wishes and interests consume and demand the always limited well of time and energy. We have grown in this seven years without any kind of sponsoring, there was never a financial support or even modest underpinnings to give any logic of survival to the publication. Everything has been done on breathhold, in a respiratory exercise, at times painful, even if oxygen (of course intangible) always managed to be there in the end. Nevertheless, these are times of generalised asphyxia and sometimes – even though nostalgia or stubbornness exert their seduction- it is necessary to dry the boat’s dock, caulk and face different courses. We will go on, but we will be other.

Thanks to all those who have been reading and watching and those who took part. You’ll be hearing from us.” fernandoprats, art director and the founder of Y SIN EMBARGO.

To buy the printed edition click HERE To browse online click HERE
Concerned with being constantly updated, with obtaining the latest model of who knows what, with wearing the badge of the modern, informed, up-to-date consumer.

Undermined by ubiquitous messages that insist in reminding us that there’s always something better, that what we have is nor will never be enough, is bound to be old, of the last season or, which is the same but not, of centuries ago, which in consumption is equal to an era.

What if we decide not to be?

What if we decide not to run in pursuit of a future made into a gadget, a SUV or a trendy shirt?

It’s then that we realise we’re forced. That was seemed an option is nothing but a way to mask the fact that the objects themselves force us to discard them.

They have a voice of their own and take command.

The operating system is no longer compatible with the software we need to install, the laptop does not have the required input for the new peripheral, the Ikea table didn’t resist the move, the soles of the shoes we bought last spring have come apart.

All of this thoroughly programmed to support a system that in turn supports us. To keep a job, to support the job of those who support ours, to not break a cycle of purchase-disposal-purchase beyond which we panic just to look.

And while we once again prepare to update, we fill up the trash bin with wasted resources. We dispose of the work of others: work designed to be thrown away. Objects with a programmed expiration date, which serve their only function without errors or delays: to make sure we remember to make our next purchase.

Is this the only way to keep the cycle?

How long will resources be able to support a race without (a) finishing line(s)?

YSE#26: uroborus issue

dec.2010jan.feb.2011

Human ability for adaptation as cause and consequence. Do we change our environment to give solutions or do we change just because we’re able to adapt? Technology as an instrument for self-saturation. How much are we able to absorb? Seduction of a world that, through its advantages, drags us towards its logic? The “saturation”, defined as a situation in which solutions have turned into problems, the probable is less and less realized, and the improbable happens more and more.